‘Covid crisis result of Centre doing no work in last 6 mths’

■ Biman Bandyopadhyay elected as Speaker

Kolkata, May 8: West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee on Saturday hit out at the centre for pushing the country to “threshold of Covid destruction” as the union ministers didn’t do any work in the last six months except for visiting Bengal daily to capture power.

She reiterated that BJP was unable to accept the mandate of the people and inciting violence after completion of elections in Bengal.

Attacking Election Commission, the TMC supremo alleged that had the poll panel not “directly” helped the saffron party, they could not have won even 30 seats in the just- concluded assembly elections.

Ms Banerjee was speaking in the Assembly after TMC MLA Biman Bandyopadhyay was elected Speaker for the third time.

BJP which has emerged as the main Opposition with 77 MLAs in the 294member Bengal house boycotted the election of the speaker blaming the state government for postpoll violence in the state.

“To set up a double engine government, they have pushed India to the threshold of Covid-19 destruction. In the last six months, the central ministers have not done any work other than coming to Bengal everyday to capture power,” Ms Banerjee said.

Incidentally, West Bengal has been witnessing a surge in the Covid-19 cases since early-April when the state was in mid of the eight-phase assembly elections with back-toback rallies by several leaders and central ministers.

Within 15 days, the Covid-19 contagion in West Bengal shoot up by several thousand.

Ms Banerjee slammed Narendra Modi government for spending a lot of money in building new Lok Sabha building, PM’s residence and other luxuries when the country is battling pandemic but not providing free vaccination to all the citizens of the coutry that would have cost them not more than `30,000 crore.

“If they give vaccine to the people, they will need `30,000 crore which is nothing for the central government. They are spending around `50,000 cr to build Lok Sabha building, Prime Minister’s residence, his plane and statue...but their priority should have been universal vaccination which they did not do,” she said.